Keep Your Legs Closed!

When Shame Masquerades as Advocacy

I cannot stay silent or remain a neutral observer in the face of abuse, hatred, oppression, or injustice. I lead a residential program that provides long-term housing and support to pregnant women and mothers experiencing homelessness and crisis. Recently, someone left a comment beneath one of our posts: “Those women need to keep their legs closed.”

I deleted it. But I could not dismiss it.

I've gotten better at choosing my battles. Every ignorant comment does not deserve my energy, and every person with a keyboard does not deserve a response. But this one called me to take my place. Because I know some of the women those words are aimed at.

I know enough of their stories to understand how much cruelty can be hidden inside one sentence.

And I have a question:

When did shame become advocacy?

How cowardly must we become to sit safely behind a screen, armed with a keyboard and a cold heart, and reduce another human being's entire life to what happened between her legs?

Where is the evidence that humiliation heals people?

Where is the evidence that condemnation changes lives more effectively than truth, accountability, education, compassion, opportunity, and love?

And if our concern is supposedly for life, I have an even more uncomfortable question:

Why are we sometimes so eager to rescue the babies of women we are equally eager to condemn?

We say we value the child.

But what message do we communicate to the child's mother?

That the life inside her is precious, but hers is questionable?

That her baby deserves protection, but she deserves humiliation?

That we will fight for the unborn child while reminding the woman carrying that child that, in our estimation, she should have “kept her legs closed”?

No.

That is not love.

And it is certainly not the kind of advocacy I am willing to practice.

Some women never had the choice to “keep their legs closed.”

Let's talk about that.

How many women had their legs forced open against their will?

How many girls—and boys—were preyed upon before they even understood what was happening to their bodies?

How many became adults carrying shame that never belonged to them?

How many children were violated by adults their parents trusted?

How many tried to tell someone and were not believed?

How many screamed for help in ways adults did not recognize?

Through anger.

Withdrawal.

Promiscuity.

Substance use.

Self-destruction.

Silence.

How many were told to forgive an abusive pastor, parent, partner, relative, teacher, coach, or community leader because exposing the truth would embarrass the family, damage the church, destroy someone's career, or “cause division”?

How many women were trafficked, exploited, assaulted, manipulated, or abused by the very people who were supposed to protect them?

And then, years later, someone who knows absolutely nothing about their story looks at their circumstances and announces:

“She should have kept her legs closed.”

Do you understand how violent those words can be?

We cannot claim to defend vulnerable people while using language that further wounds them.

We cannot masquerade cruelty as righteousness.

We cannot weaponize shame and call it holiness.

Some conversations are hard and we can do hard things like ask,

What if she did choose?

What if no one forced her?

What if a woman voluntarily opened her legs?

What if she did it more than once?

What if she has had multiple partners?

What if she committed adultery?

What if she became pregnant outside of marriage?

What if she terminated a pregnancy?

What if she has lived a life you consider promiscuous?

Then what?

Does her humanity disappear?

Does her life cease to have value?

Is she disqualified from receiving compassion?

Is she beyond forgiveness?

Should she spend the rest of her life paying publicly for decisions she may already have wrestled with privately?

Should her child inherit our contempt for her?

Have you listened to her story?

Have you sat with her long enough to understand how she arrived where she is?

Have you heard her pain?

Or does her story make you uncomfortable because some part of it sounds too much like yours?

We have become remarkably comfortable judging people for sins we have simply learned to hide better.

Some of us are holding young people to standards we ourselves did not keep.

Some of us survived our own mistakes without having them permanently attached to our names.

Some of us had sex before marriage.

Some of us lied.

Cheated.

Drank too much.

Made reckless decisions.

Stayed in unhealthy relationships.

Hurt people.

Compromised our values.

Some of us were protected by families with enough money, influence, privacy, or social standing to make our mistakes disappear from public view.

And some people weren't.

Poverty has a way of making brokenness visible.

So does homelessness.

So does pregnancy.

So does addiction.

So does incarceration.

So does trauma.

So does needing help.

But visibility is not evidence of greater depravity.

Sometimes it simply means one person's wounds happened where everyone could see them while another person's wounds were hidden behind education, careers, church titles, beautiful homes, expensive cars, respectable marriages, gated communities, and carefully curated photographs.

Some of us have mistaken hidden brokenness for holiness.

And that mistake has made us cruel.

Shame has a history.

We now understand that many of the girls who were once quietly “sent away” to relatives during pregnancy were not simply taking extended vacations.

Some were being hidden.

Some were being punished.

Some were coerced.

Some were forced to surrender children.

Some carried secrets for decades because a family's reputation mattered more than a young woman's healing.

And some took those secrets to the grave.

Society shamed them.

Families shamed them.

Churches sometimes shamed them.

Other women shamed them.

And eventually, many learned to shame themselves.

We have enough evidence from generations of silence to know that shame does not make trauma disappear.

It teaches trauma how to hide.

And hidden trauma does not vanish.

It travels.

Through families.

Through relationships.

Through parenting.

Through communities.

Through generations.

Until someone finally becomes brave enough to tell the truth.

This is where my advocacy stands.

I believe children deserve protection.

I believe women deserve protection.

I believe mothers deserve support.

I believe fathers need truth, accountability, healing, and support.

I believe people should be responsible for their choices.

I also believe accountability and humiliation are not the same thing.

I believe we can teach without degrading.

Correct without dehumanizing.

Hold standards without withholding compassion.

Tell the truth without becoming cruel.

And I refuse to participate in any form of advocacy that requires me to diminish a woman's humanity in order to demonstrate concern for her child.

Housing is advocacy.

Safety is advocacy.

Education is advocacy.

Maternal health care is advocacy.

Trauma-informed support is advocacy.

Helping a mother become financially stable is advocacy.

Helping a family rebuild is advocacy.

Sitting with someone long enough to hear the story behind the circumstance is advocacy.

And sometimes advocacy means standing between a vulnerable person and people who have decided that cruelty is an acceptable form of conviction.

To the person carrying shame:

Maybe someone told you that you should have known better.

Maybe someone blamed you for what was done to you.

Maybe you made choices you regret.

Maybe you stayed too long.

Maybe you trusted the wrong person.

Maybe you were manipulated by someone who knew exactly how to use your faith, loyalty, fear, childhood wounds, or need for love against you.

Maybe you have spent years pacifying a parent's ego so you could remain the “good daughter” or “good son.”

Maybe scripture was wielded against you incorrectly.

Maybe holiness was presented to you as silence.

Maybe forgiveness was demanded of you while accountability was never demanded of the person who harmed you.

Hear me:

You are still worthy of dignity.

Stand up.

Speak.

Tell your story when you are ready.

Seek help.

Learn.

Heal.

Take responsibility for what belongs to you—and refuse to carry what does not.

You were never meant to spend your entire life beneath the weight of another human being's judgment.

God does not require another person's approval before extending grace.

And to those of us who call ourselves advocates:

We must do better.

It is not enough to fight to save a baby and disappear after birth.

It is not enough to defend pregnancy while ignoring housing.

It is not enough to celebrate motherhood while ignoring maternal mental health.

It is not enough to tell women to choose life without helping create conditions in which mothers and children can live with safety, stability, dignity, and opportunity.

And it is certainly not enough to speak loudly about the unborn while speaking contemptuously about the woman carrying that life.

If our advocacy cannot make room for both truth and mercy, we need to examine what we are actually advocating for.

Bryan Stevenson writes in Just Mercy that our shared brokenness connects us and forms part of the basis of our common humanity.

I believe that.

Because the woman whose brokenness is visible is not fundamentally different from the woman whose brokenness is carefully concealed.

Neither is the man.

Neither am I.

Neither are you.

Our stories differ.

Our wounds differ.

Our choices differ.

Our consequences differ.

But none of us has been appointed God over another person's humanity.

So no, I will not tell the women we serve to “keep their legs closed.”

I will tell them to keep learning.

Keep healing.

Keep growing.

Keep telling the truth.

Keep becoming.

Keep building stability.

Keep protecting their children.

Keep discovering their worth.

Keep taking responsibility for their futures.

And when necessary, I will stand between them and people determined to reduce their entire humanity to their worst experience, their greatest mistake, or what happened between their legs.

We have done enough shaming.

It is time to build.

It is time to tell the truth.

It is time to confront abuse.

It is time to hold people accountable.

It is time to protect children.

It is time to support mothers.

It is time to heal families.

And it is time to remember that grace was never reserved for people whose mistakes were easier to hide.

You do not have to approve of someone's choices to defend their humanity.

That is where I stand.

— Frances Robin